Sign of things to come? A notice greeting visitors to seized file-sharing search engine torrent-finder.com. Federal graphic artists have been hard at work designing this new splash page for websites the DOJ intends to shut down.

While affected domains so far all fall under the purview of copyright infringement, one has to wonder what this could mean for any other sites on the DOJ’s list of domains-non-grata.

ICE first became actively involved in matters of online gaming with the government’s case against Daniel Tzvetkoff, a payment processor for Full Tilt and PokerStars who was the first person publicly indicted for UIGEA violations.

Essentially, COICA would legitimize actions like today’s taken against file-sharing websites, authorizing “a blanket takedown of any domain alleged to be assisting activities that violate copyright law, based upon the judgment of state attorneys general.” [The Raw Story]

“The main mechanism of the bill is to interfere with the Internet’s domain name system (DNS), which translates names like “www.eff.org” or “www.nytimes.com” into the IP addresses that computers use to communicate. The bill creates a blacklist of censored domains; the Attorney General can ask a court to place any website on the blacklist if infringement is “central” to the purpose of the site.”

Whatever the outcome of COICA in Congress, it seems that Homeland Security isn’t waiting on legislation before taking action against some sites that they deem to be operating outside of the auspices of federal law.

The Music and Entertainment industry have been lobbying hard for Congress to come down hard on “bootleggs” We have worked with them closely here in LA regarding counterfiet materials. It only makes sense these bootleggers leave the streets and go to the internet. They always try to stay one step ahead of us. Although sooner or later we catch up. It usually is a money thing for us.